(Radio Iowa) – The state unemployment rate moved up one tenth of a point in October to three percent. Iowa Workforce Development Director Beth Townsend says there’s been minimal movement the last several months and that probably due to the pending election.  “I do think this is a reflection of the anxiety and uncertainty that employers had pre-election,” she says. Townsend says that anxiety impacted decisions on hiring, expanding, you know, capital investments. “They were just waiting to see kind of which direction they thought the fiscal policy would go and which direction they thought the economy would go. And now we have the election, and so hopefully they will be able to start making some decisions moving forward,” she says.

Townsend says it is not good to see manufacturing lose 16-hundred jobs, but she says the industry is still strong. “You know, manufacturing is our second largest industry. So it’s even with the 16-hundred layoffs, we still have over 223-thousand Iowans that are employed in manufacturing, which is good,” Townsend says. She says the workers at the manufacturing facilities get enough notice to start looking for a new job and many don’t go on unemployment. “Those who are highly skilled in advanced manufacturing, still the layoffs you see, for instance, at John Deere, those are highly skilled, highly prized, highly sought after employees,” Townsend says. “And so other employers engaged in advanced manufacturing are recruiting from those communities immediately.”

She says the industry demand is a bright spot at a down time when someone gets laid off. “Those folks are not going to have as difficult a time finding a job as someone who is laid off, who may not have, you know the skills or experience that those folks have.” The construction industry lost 18-hundred jobs in October, which Townsend says is a little early for seasonal layoffs there.

She says there’s hope that with some of the uncertainty of the election behind us, there will start be some improvements in that area.